The Nok Culture:
Nok is a small village near Kafanchan in the southern area of Kaduna. The “NOK” is a pre-historic culture of central Nigeria, which was active between 500 BC and 200 AD. Basically, NOK culture was more of a metal or iron using society.
NOK culture was associated with the following features:
- It was a metalworking tradition
- It involved smelting furnaces and iron slag
- It produces iron and tin
Terracotta figurine (baked clay), ground stone axes, furnace wastes, beads, iron axes and other tools were principal products of NOK culture.
NOK sculpture appears to be the earliest plastic art in terracotta in the whole of Black African countries.
The terracotta resembled human heads and the heads of animals like monkey and elephant. Nok people were agriculturists who kept cattle and exploited the oil palm tree.